Today's healthcare IT leaders have a lot on their plates. The rush to digitize is hitting them hard -- but one CIO says it's shortsighted to simply focus on technology itself, not on the fundamental industry changes that tech will bring.

Ask Rab, a member of the Becker's 100 Hospital and Health System CIOs to Know, to describe the impact of a single product that Hackensack UMC uses, and he's liable to answer, half seriously, "You don't know who I am, do you?" — as he did when speaking to CIO.com during a break at the College of Healthcare Information Management Executive's recent CHIME CIO Forum.)

Rush to Digitization Hitting Healthcare Hard

Dr. Shafiq Rab. (Image courtesy of Hackensack UMC .)

Healthcare should have digitized long ago, Rab says, but the need for revenue trumped the need for innovation. Without funding from the meaningful use incentive program, he surmises, only the most advanced health systems would have EHR systems today.

As EHR adoption has risen — today, 80 percent of eligible hospitals and 50 percent of eligible providers participate in meaningful use — so, too, has the realization that, as Rab puts it, "It's time to get wisdom out of [the EHR]."

Wisdom has always been in the head of providers, Rab says: "There's a journey from information to knowledge to wisdom." Transferring that wisdom from an individual physician to an entire healthcare system starts with documentation, which is a burden for many EHR users. "That learning curve, that way to do things efficiently, lies in the hands of very few," he says.

Healthcare's rush to digitize revealed a startling truth: Most doctors can't type, so "seeing a patient" often becomes a long process wrought with hunt-and-peck notation. Additional challenges emerged — namely, security and passwords, which were shared, posted publicly or simply kept at the factory default. Thumbprints and eye scans emerged as viable options, Rab says, until infection control entered the picture. "It should be easy," he says, "but there are unintended consequences."

Easy or not, it needs to happen — and quickly, Rab says. Healthcare is coming around on the encryption of data at rest and in motion, in part because of the updated HIPAA Security Rule, but there are still access controls to implement and Wi-Fi networks to lock down. Moreover, the process must resemble sublimation — water's transition from solid to gas without becoming a liquid — or else it will take 10 years.

'Let End Users Run the Show,' But Keep Executives Happy, Too

As healthcare tries to catch up, CIOs need to "let end users run the show." CEOs have the money, Rab says, but physicians and nurses have the power. They are the real decision-makers, he says, and they're the ones from whom you need buy-in.

"Let them yell and tell [you] the mistakes," Rab says. "You have to get to the power. You change the mind of the decision makers by manipulation or emotional blackmail."

You accomplish this, he says, by making them a central part of training. Hackensack did this when rolling out Imprivata OneSign single sign-on key tab technology. Actual training lasted but a few minutes, Rab says, with the remaining time devoted to real-world use cases emphasizing efficiency and accessibility benefits.

Medicare reimbursements are "the easiest way to live" in healthcare today, Rab says, but healthcare reform and shifting care models will emphasize efficiency as the new way to live. Healthcare IT innovations such as streamlined appointment scheduling, SSO technology for clinical systems and a rentable cloud-based EHR systems that complete the "circle of information" will standardize and modernize longstanding processes while lowering administrative costs.

Accomplishing this, Rab says, is "all about trust and then transparency." This, in turn, requires "possibilities, opportunities, relationships and behavior change," none of which will be accomplished overnight.

"This takes time," he says. "You need to stick around to make it happen.